The Bridge by Solomon Jones Page A

gray.
    The detective looked down at the ground, clearly embarrassed. “We don’t know. My guess is she put on his uniform and walked out through the parking lot. I mean, he didn’t have it on when we found him on the bathroom floor.”
    Wilson’s lip curled as disgust swept over her face.
    â€œWhy he was in the bathroom with her in the first place?” she asked, pausing for effect. “With his uniform off.”
    â€œI don’t like your tone,” the detective said, his eyes flashing anger.
    â€œAnd I don’t like your nasty-ass officers molesting our prisoners,” Wilson said, moving toward the detective.
    Lynch stepped between them and placed a hand on the detective’s chest. “Where is Judy now?” he said.
    The detective looked from Lynch to Wilson, then sighed in frustration before surveying the empty spaces in the parking lot.
    â€œI don’t know,” he said quietly. “But it looks like Chalmers’s car is gone.”
    â€œI don’t believe this,” Wilson said, throwing her hands in the air.
    Lynch’s reaction was cooler. “Let’s put out a description of the car,” he told the detective. “I’m sure she couldn’t have gotten far.”
    But not even Lynch believed that. With the Ben Franklin Bridge and the state of New Jersey just minutes away, Judy could be anywhere. For that matter, Sonny could, too.
    None of that mattered to Daneen. Sonny was just a means to an end. For her, it was about finding the one person who could help her to reclaim what had been lost in their months and years apart. It was about Kenya. And she wasn’t about to let anyone forget that.
    So she turned to Lynch with piercing eyes and spoke with the concern of a mother. “What about my baby?”
    Lynch and Wilson looked at her, then at each other. But before they could answer, the handheld radio on Lynch’s hip crackled to life.
    â€œDan 25?”
    Lynch snatched the radio from his belt. “Dan 25.”
    â€œA complainant at the Fairview Apartments says your male just left her unit. He’s wearing a brown shirt and black pants and driving a blue 1990 Ford Taurus with a Pennsylvania tag of B-Barney, W-William, D-David, five-six-four-three. Direction unknown.”
    â€œDan 25, what’s the complainant’s apartment number?”
    â€œEight D. That’s eight D-David.”
    He turned to Daneen. “That apartment number sound familiar to you?”
    â€œNo,” she said. “But that’s probably that young girl he mess with up there.”
    â€œAnd when were you going to tell us about that?” Wilson asked, clearly annoyed.
    Daneen wasn’t about to be bullied.
    â€œI woulda told you when you asked me,” she said. “Ya’ll the cops, not me.” not me.
    â€œDan 25,” Lynch said, ignoring Daneen and speaking into the
radio as he went back to his car. “I want that description broadcast over J band and East Division. Stand by for flash information on Judy Brown, wanted for investigation on narcotics violations, auto theft, and assault on a police officer.”
    Lynch jumped into his car with Wilson and Daneen while the detective who’d told him of Judy’s escape rattled off her description to radio.
    As Lynch drove the three of them toward the Fairview Apartments, verbal pictures of Sonny and Judy were painted over the airwaves of Philadelphia.
    With Judge Baylor on his deathbed, and Lynch poised to take the blame, the search for them was about much more than Kenya now.
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    The knock at the door startled Dot. She thought it was Sonny, coming back to apologize, to take her with him, to do anything but what he’d done before he left.
    She dragged herself from her bed, walked into her living room, and stared through the peephole at a police officer standing in the hallway with a notepad in hand.
    She hadn’t expected the police to arrive